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The Films of Oliver Stone

The Films of Oliver Stone

The movies of the American director Oliver Stone in many ways mirror the travails and transformation of a generation - studies in violence, hubris, greed, celebrity worship, and the power of media.

Credit: Orion Pictures

Born in New York City in 1946, Stone was raised in an affluent home (his father was a stockbroker) and attended Yale. He served in Vietnam and came home a decorated combat veteran, and a man who was, he says, forever changed. "How do you come back from the war? If you come back stone dead inside or do you come back with a heart still? That was the hardest thing for me. It was not fighting the enemy, although they were significant. But it was to try to keep your own humanity alive inside you. Believe me, that war is a curse, because it scars people for life." He overcame it, he told Katie Couric, through art. "I made three movies about it. So, I was able to exorcise some of these devils."

Credit: Cinema Libre

Director Oliver Stone on location filming "Platoon."

Credit: Orion Pictures

"Midnight Express"

Stone won his first Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation of Billy Hayes' book about his experience as an American imprisoned in Turkey for drug smuggling. The harrowing 1978 film starred Brad Davis and was directed by Alan Parker.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

"The Hand"

One of Stone's first directorial efforts, this 1981 horror film stars Michael Caine as a comic artist who loses an appendage in a gruesome accident. But as the ads promise, "It lives. It crawls. And suddenly, it kills"  including Stone himself, who appears in a cameo as a vagrant who sadly encounters The Hand. It fared better than his debut feature, 1974's "Seizure," a horror flick that starred cult icons Martine Beswick and Jonathan Frid ("Dark Shadows").

Credit: Orion Pictures

"Scarface"

Following "Midnight Express," Stone worked on several screenplays for other directors. He shared credit with John Milius for "Conan the Barbarian" and worked on the adaptations of "8 Million Ways to Die" and the musical "Evita." His most memorable writing assignment was the update of "Scarface" (1983), starring Al Pacino and directed by Brian De Palma, even if much of this highly-quoted film's dialogue is unprintable here.

Credit: Universal

"Year of the Dragon"

Stone co-wrote with director Michael Cimino the screenplay for the 1985 gang war drama "Year of the Dragon."

Credit: DEG

"Salvador"

James Woods gave a career-defining performance as a photojournalist chronicling a Latin American dictatorship in "Salvador" (1986).

Credit: Hemdale

"Platoon"

With its depiction of heroism and honor struggling to rise above the madness of war, Stone's "Platoon" (1986) became a cathartic experience for many Vietnam vets, who were often portrayed in Hollywood and TV dramas as mentally unbalanced, vengeful and violent characters. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, it won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Credit: Orion Pictures

"Wall Street"

The lure of money and power was tantalizingly dramatized in this 1987 tale of a young man (Charlie Sheen) tempted by wealth's corrupting influences. He goes toe-to-toe with financier Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), who proceeds to walk all over him. Gekko memorably defined a decade of excess by exclaiming, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

"Wall Street"

Of "Wall Street," Stone told Katie Couric, "We were the first. People had never thought about money as a subject for a movie. And I think we caught a flare of that 1980s period, that consumerism, Ronald Reagan prosperity, so to speak."

Credit: 20th Century Fox

"Born on the Fourth of July"

After filming the Eric Bogosian play "Talk Radio," Stone directed "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic, a young American paralyzed from wounds suffered in Vietnam who became an outspoken anti-war protester. The film featured Tom Cruise's best performance.

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Born on the Fourth of July"

The film earned Stone his second Best Director Academy Award.

Credit: Universal Pictures

"The Doors"

Stone returned to the Sixties with "The Doors" (1991), about the revolutionary rock band fronted by Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer).

Credit: Tristar Pictures

"JFK"

No other film of Stone's solidified in the public's mind an image of the filmmaker as did his 1991 story examining the fallout from the assassination of President Kennedy. "JFK" took New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) on a hyper-kinetic journey into a labyrinth of politics, espionage, dirty tricks and lost innocence, in which a patriotic, conservative law enforcement official begins to doubt his faith in his government - but not the law. The film was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 2, for its bravura cinematography and editing.

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Heaven & Earth"

The third of Stone's trilogy of films on Vietnam, "Heaven & Earth" (1993) tells the true story of the hardships of a Vietnamese woman (Hiep Thi Le) during and after the war. Le Ly Hayslip co-authored two books: "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places" and "Child of War, Woman of Peace."

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Natural Born Killers"

Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis are lovers and serial murderers in "Natural Born Killers" (1994), written by Stone, David Veloz and Richard Rutowski, based on a story by Quentin Tarantino.

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Nixon"

The 1995 biopic "Nixon" calls itself "an attempt to understand the truth." Just prior to its release, the family of the late president issued a statement calling parts of the movie "reprehensible," and accusing the filmmakers of seeking to solely and maliciously "defame and degrade President and Mrs. Nixon's memories in the mind of the American public." Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen portrayed the first couple.

"U Turn"

"Any Given Sunday"

Al Pacino (pictured with Jamie Foxx and Dennis Quaid) plays the coach of a Miami NFL team struggling with professional and personal challenges in "Any Given Sunday" (1999).

Credit: Warner Bros.

"Alexander"

Colin Farrell starred as Alexander the Great in Stone's 2004 military epic. The cast also included Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer and Anthony Hopkins.

Credit: Warner Brothers

"World Trade Center"

Stone addressed the mammoth scale of the 9/11 attacks with a more confined 2006 film about the struggles of rescue workers at the ruins of the World Trade Center and of two police officers trapped in the rubble.

Credit: Paramount Pictures

"W"

Given Stone's liberal proclivities, audiences assumed his 2008 film on George W. Bush would be a scathing indictment. But Stone told Daily Variety, "I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

Stone told Katie Couric, "As much as I may detest his policies, I tried to make him human. And some people criticized me and they said it was too sympathetic to Bush. I thought it was empathetic, [which] is a big difference to me."

Credit: Lionsgate

"South of the Border"

In Stone's 2010 documentary "South of the Border," the director engages in dialogues with several Latin American leaders, including Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, to discuss political and social movements as they are evolving in reaction to (or in spite of) North American influence.

Credit: Cinema Libre

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"

Stone returned to the blood sport of finance with his 2010 sequel, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." Michael Douglas revives his role as Gordon Gekko, now out of prison and ready to square off against Josh Brolin and Shia LaBeouf.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"

Stone had hesitated doing a sequel to one of his most popular films ("You can never go back in time, set foot in the same river twice, you know?"). But more than two decades after the first "Wall Street," the excesses of the financial world still seem timely. He told Kate Couric the bubble of the 1980s is a recurring phenomenon: "We've seen bubbles all my life. In 2000 you saw the bubble with the Internet, and then you saw another bubble with real estate. I've seen four bubbles, big bubbles now. I think to a certain degree, we are a bubbled economy. What the next bubble is, we'll see."

Credit: 20th Century Fox

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"

Stone pictured on the set with Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan. Of his latest film Stone says, "I make stories. And it's a great story about these six people in this shark world of New York City in that 2008 period. It has love and trust, betrayal, greed, all those juicy issues that make a movie work well. [The characters] all screw each other in some point in the movie, and they all kind of  it's what life is about to me."

Credit: 20th Century Fox

"Savages"

John Travolta star in "Savages," directed by Oliver Stone and based on the novel by Don Winslow about American marijuana growers waging war with a Mexican drug cartel. In addition to Travolta, the cast includes Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch and Demian Bichir.